Hey Samra, thanks for joining! I’m not sure what happened when you tried to crop the image, but it works best if you use a perfectly square picture, and should work perfect if that picture is 160 x 160 pictures. If you still have trouble and want to email me a pic to jacob at wanewscouncil dott org I’d be happy to get it working for you.

Also, you can mention people across the site by putting the @ sign in front of their username, i.e. @samrajb sends you a default email notification, (you can turn off notifications in your profile settings).

This activity stream is meant for quick conversations and updates, the Forum page is better for topics and threads. Unfortunately we have a crazy influx of spam from underpaid humans overseas that join and post in the Media Ethics group, the other groups are free of spam at the moment so maybe pick a group and post a topic there http://wanewscouncil.org/groups

Thanks again for coming aboard

In reply to - samrajb posted an update: I keep hoping someone will explain how to crop the avatar, since it doesn’t seem to be working on my computer. Once we’ve got that figured out, I’m looking forward to engaging in some intelligent conversations about journalism. ·
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Hi Jeanne ( @jeannemck ), thanks for the note, I know an AP reporter who lives in Chile, I will ping him over your request. Also some folks at http://journalismthatmatters.org are starting a food reporting project, it’s still in the works but can keep you in the loop as it unfolds.

In reply to - jeannemck posted an update: Putting together a ”hit list” of national food and environment writers to travel to Chile to see how the salmon farming industry and government of Chile worked together to create a plan for recovering from the devastating ISA (infectious salmon anemia) virus that nearly wiped out their industry 3 years ago. Suggestions [...] ·
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In my first post on the Seattle Interactive Conference , I went over some locally developed tools designed to make information more relevant and insightful. Mobile apps like Trover, which allows geo-discovery through photos, and Evri, which organizes ~15,000 news feeds into a friendly iPad interface, are useful on an individual level. But my concern is: How can they scale to community [...]

Journalists have always covered the tech industry as a section of the newspaper, but now, due to the personal media explosion, the very existence of the trade is dependent on conversations and decisions that happen at events like this year’s Seattle Interactive Conference . #SIC2011 had many of the same trimmings as the now messianic #SXSWi (South By [...]

Hackathons are getting trendy. Not just in journalism, but health care , education, entrepreneurism, crisis management , mobile tech , government, and other arenas. Yes, it’s another technology buzz word, but one that hopefully sticks around and evolves into a combustible formula. Bringing together software experts and social leaders who sprint together to solve big challenges is a remarkable thing, especially when there’s a $10,000 prize [...]

hey there @witabonita, welcome! As you see, you can mention other users by putting the @ symbol in front of their username. This triggers a notification (which can be turned off in your profile settings)

Please feel free to post thoughts and things going on in the news on this activity stream or if you have a more in-depth topic, add it to the forums, we’d love to hear what you think about the way things are covered around here.

I bit stunned that this made the front page of KIRO’s mynorthwest.com, next to stuff about the Old Spice Man and a video of a dad dropping his daughter to catch a foul ball at a Dodgers game (not even local). http://mynorthwest.com/?nid=11&sid=491160 No information about the trial, just the fact that the infamous Barefoot Bandit [...]

Mozilla is best known for Firefox, the open source darling loved by millions which showed us that a browser is more than just a way to load websites, it’s a way to customize your experience of the web itself. Under new direction from Mark Surman , Mozilla is growing new legs to go beyond Firefox. They recently [...]

A whole slew of journalists wrote some compelling confessions about their failures for the latest Carnival of Journalism #JCarn. Pretty good reads, from some well respected folks, including yours truly ;-D

hello @susanknape, welcome! As you see, you can mention other users by putting the @ symbol in front of their username. This triggers a notification (which can be turned off in your profile settings)

Please feel free to post in this activity stream or if you have a more in-depth topic, add it to the forums, we’d love to see your insight, especially coming from your experience! Again, welcome aboard!

The Washington News Council received the honor of being named 2010 Organization of the Year by the Municipal League of King County. Here is a video of John Hamer accepting the award from Seattle based philanthropist Bill Gates Sr. at the awards gala.

Western Washington University journalism student and Investigate West intern, Will Graff, recounts in full detail how he was confronted for legally taking pictures from a public street at the Ferndale ConocoPhillips refinery. The pictures were part of a story investigating the potential public safety hazards of a chemical disaster. The security personnel at ConocoPhillips were [...]

Last year Journalism that Matters held its monumental Pacific Northwest Unconference where several projects have since emerged. It was then that Fancher formally launched his mission to “cultivate abundant journalism” and last night marked a significant milestone in that effort. Twenty-one of the region’s most influential news experts and enthusiasts gathered at the swanky offices of Seattle [...]

@johnhamer and I frequently talk about the decline of Ombudsmen in the news business. Andrew Alexander, Ombudsman for the Washington Post recently called it quits after two years, and puts some insightful commentary on the state of the industry in his farewell post.

I’ve written before that The Post on its worst days is better than most newspapers on their best days. In print and online, it retains immense influence through journalism that can frame public discourse. And it still produces stunningly ambitious work, such as last year’s ”Top Secret America” project on the huge national security buildup and the ”Hidden Life of Guns” series tracking firearms used in crimes. Priced lower than most competitors, the newspaper is a bargain.

But it has become riddled with typos, grammatical mistakes and intolerable ”small” factual errors that erode credibility. Local news coverage, once robust, has withered. The Post often trails the competition on stories. The excessive use of anonymous sources has expanded into blogs. The once-broken system for publishing corrections has been repaired, but corrections often still take too long to appear. The list goes on.”

Hey there @amyduncan! Welcome aboard! Not sure what’s causing the hiccup with your avatar pic, but @brianglanz & I will jump on it. Feel free to start a forum topic if you’ve got something to discuss, or just post thoughts and links in the community activity stream here. You can mention users with the @ symbol before their username, and if the email notifications are bugging you, they can be adjusted in your profile > settings > notifications.

I agree that using real names encourages civility, but I also think requiring real names in all circumstances leads to over sanitation. There’s a lot of valuable information out there that can’t be shared without significant risks, if not straight sacrifice on behalf of the messenger. Unfortunately you can’t measure what’s never said, so it’s [...]